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Fried Corn

Fried corn is cooked by frying corn kernels in butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the corn from the cob and scrape out all the milk.

Fry the corn

  1. In a frying pan, melt a little butter over medium heat.

  2. When the butter is very hot, add the corn and cover the pan.

  3. Fry for fifteen minutes, stirring often.

  4. When the corn begins to brown, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh corn
Provides the main body of the dish, and its milky juice adds moisture as it cooks.
Butter
Conducts heat into the corn and adds richness and flavour as it browns.

The step that matters

Adding the corn to the hot butter and covering the pan. Corn added to butter that is not hot enough steams rather than fries. Covering the pan traps moisture first, and the lid is removed later so the surface can brown.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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